Importance of Career Management in Business | Required Skills

The manager of career management guides employees’ employ-ability or mobility by ensuring that their skills and wishes for change are reconciled with the strategy and needs of the company.  Career Management officer also known as Internal Mobility Manager, Responsible for skills management and mobility, GPEC Manager and Careers, Job and Career Manager, Responsible for jobs and skills, Head of Talent Development and Talent manager, etc

Why Career Management is Important in Business

Definition of the company’s career management policy

• Participate, in liaison with the human resources department and the management committee of the company, in defining the principles governing the professional development of employees.
• Formalize processes allowing an employee to express a demand for professional development and to integrate a new function.

Analysis of current and future business needs

• To put in place the internal tools allowing identifying and centralizing all the wishes of evolution of the employees and the needs of the managers.
• Follow company indicators related to social data (age pyramid, turnover rate …).
• Anticipate changes in the company in the medium and long term by implementing plans for managing the workforce.
• Meet the operational staffs who have expressed a desire for mobility following different contexts (voluntary departure of a collaborator, creation or replacement of a position).
• Identify jobs in tension for which there will be skills shortage.

Management of the forecasting of jobs and skills (GPEC)

• Formalize the recommendations for the implementation of a GPEC agreement.
• Participate in the drafting of the GPEC agreement, negotiate with the trade unions and ensure its deployment.
• Define and implement procedures related to the description of functions, analyze positions, carry out job descriptions, conduct related interviews.
• Creating or redesigning tools: reference and mapping of jobs and bridges, skills dictionary, annual appraisal document.
• Ensure reporting.
• Select and implement a GPEC software package for operational staff.

Evaluation of employee performance and potential

• Manage the reflection, in liaison with managers and HR managers, on the assessment of skills and performance.
• Dialogue internally with all managers and human resources managers who can provide visibility in terms of detection and evaluation of potential and performance.
• Meet and evaluate all internal candidates for an officially open position in order to compare their profiles with the specifications of the position to be filled.
• Aggregate the formalized results of the annual interviews of all employees in order to assess their wishes for change, their degree of satisfaction with the company and the position they occupy and the development of their skills.

Internal Mobility Management

• To study the professional projects of the employees, to coordinate or conduct the interviews (annual, professional, second part of career).
• Manage the professional development of seniors, support professional retraining by implementing a personalized professional project and coaching.
• Define assistance plans for employees in difficulty.
• Establish succession (succession) plans by identifying potential replacements, particularly for high-potential executives and for rare talent.
• To animate these plans, to ensure the people review in the framework of the career committees in charge of analyzing the existing competences of the employees.
• Manage startup files.
• Ensure the integration of employees who evolve internally, monitor their performance by exchanging with them and their managers.

Possible Activities in Career Management Process

• Work on the development of new evaluation tools, internal or external: psychological, psychometric tests.
• Ensure internal communication (on elements related to career management).
• Conduct or participate in cross-cutting projects with a wide range of themes such as: the skills assessment system, a support system for intra-job mobility, the implementation of a PES, HRIS tools monitoring of careers, performance indicators).
• Use external providers to evaluate the skills or potential of a collaborator through an assessment center.

Variability of Activities

Depending on the economic situation of the company, the role of the manager of career management differs.

• In the growth phase, it has a very important interface and evaluation role. Above all, it drives the development of competencies and puts each employee in a position where he or she will perform best for the company.
• In a phase of slowdown, even economic degradation, it presents the allocations equivalent to those of a manager of an employment office in charge of the dismissal and the reclassification of significant numbers. The internal communication dimension towards the employees is then paramount as well as the legal knowledge of the situations of termination of the employment contract, to avoid any approximation penalizing for the company.

Its role varies according to the size of the company and the profiles it serves.

• In large organizations, its function can be assumed by the human resources development manager and in SMEs or on sites (factories) by the human resources manager.
• It can be entrusted to him a portfolio (population) of employees: executives, trades (for example support functions, commercial).
• Its function is often coupled with other HR functions. Hybrid functions such as recruitment, training (strengthening employability) or management of departures are frequently found.

Required Skills for Career Management Officer

 Technical Skills

• Good knowledge of the organization and functioning of the company: the manager of career management must be fully aware of the different professions of the company and the interactions existing between the departments.
• Control of the various techniques of maintenance of evaluation: in this sense it is close to the recruitment manager, with the difference that it recruits internally.
• Good legal knowledge (social law, collective agreement, etc.), particularly with regard to redundancies and reclassifications of certain employees.
• Knowledge of the different possibilities linked to the company’s compensation systems: incentive, participation, special bonuses …
• Technical culture corresponding to the sector in which it operates, with a view to credibility both vis-à-Vis the candidates and the operational staff for whom it recruits.
• Practice of management tools (SIRH) and sourcing of applications (Internet, database, etc.).
• Fluency in English, mobility often taking place at the international level.
• Strong HR culture to interact with internal and external HR partners.
• Strategic vision and sense of anticipation: knowing how to project in the medium term on regulatory and business developments.

Personality Traits

• Diplomacy, especially for negative responses to internal candidates. Unlike the recruitment manager, he is in contact all year with potential candidates. He must therefore justify his decisions with tact and objectivity.
• Empathy and communication skills, in order to interact effectively with all employees of the company, and present the opportunities for internal evolution from a favorable angle.
• Openness and intellectual curiosity: he must be interested in all the professions present in his company and be able to understand the different micro-cultures that compose it.
• Psychology, to understand the aspirations of the employees and evaluate, with regard to their motivation, their potential within a new position.
• Pragmatism, in order to anchor in reality the aspirations of the employees facing the needs of the managers of the company.
• Responsiveness and strength of proposal to promote relevant internal developments benefiting both parties.

Factors in the Evolution of Career Management

The regulatory provisions that have secured career paths and the predictive management of jobs and skills are an important aspect of career management. In order to implement the right to career development and employ-ability (internal and external) provided for in the texts and case law, the manager of career management is more involved in the assessment of competences within the framework of process improvement projects and tools.

The evolution of Human Resource Information System tools has led companies to modify their processes, particularly in reporting. Indicators provide a better understanding of wage costs; it is associated with piloting the wage bill.

With the development of collaborative web technologies, it now has the possibility to focus its communication by valuing the employer brand.

Global competition, a shortage of some key competencies, has expanded its mission to talent management (recruitment, detection, retention of potential or scarce skills), which takes on a strategic dimension.